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<title>Not Love by mooglecharm (morphaileffect)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25908223">Not Love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphaileffect/pseuds/mooglecharm'>mooglecharm (morphaileffect)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy XV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Gen, Meta</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:13:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>508</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25908223</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphaileffect/pseuds/mooglecharm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Brief character explorations: how the four heroes express love, and why they don't call it that.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Not Love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My very first fic for this fandom. Done to flesh out their personalities in my head. Here for posterity.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="post-reblog-content">
<p></p><div class="post-body"><p>They don’t call it love.</p><p>***</p><p>Gladio calls it duty. Doing what’s expected. Doing what’s necessary, even if it’s beyond your limits, even if it hurts. Even if you feel like your body is going to give out.</p><p>It’s standing still, standing strong, against whatever storms may come. Keeping the ones important to you unharmed. And not showing how much it’s taking out of you.</p><p>He wouldn’t say it’s love. It’s more like being immovable, impenetrable, as wave after wave of pain comes. It’s absorbing, deflecting, becoming impervious, so that the ones important to you can do what they must, with you keeping them safe. Like being a shield.</p><p>The worse the pain gets, the stronger you must be.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Ignis calls it being useful. Filling in the blanks. See a need, satisfy it. Give what you can, until there’s nothing left…but at the same time, make sure there’s always a little something left.</p><p>If there’s a gap in leadership, you step in. If there’s a need for subservience, you bow your head.</p><p>If it’s beyond your limits, you push your limits farther. Become anything that normalizes, anything that makes sense. Become a safe, warm, familiar place.</p><p>It’s giving direction. Protection. Sustenance. Advice. Being indispensable. Not being dead weight.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Prompto calls it never going away. Making your presence felt, however possible. Being there to witness, to remember.</p><p>Touch is par for the course. He’s known how it is to long for human touch. Understands how each little gesture stands a chance of meaning the world.</p><p>So you touch, every time you can get away with it. You call their name, shake them out of their sadness, say something stupid just to remind them you’re still there. You throw your weight like a blanket over the sadness. You push your own demons to the back of your head.</p><p>It’s okay. You’re not alone. I’m still here. I’ll remember everything.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Noctis doesn’t quite know what love is. Love, he was taught, is what you feel for your country, for your father, for your hobbies, for your childhood friends. But he doesn’t know exactly what that means, how all those feelings could have the same name.</p><p>Love, he was taught, is necessary to rule. To become a great king. To sacrifice. But he doesn’t know much about any of that. Sheltered all his life, sleepwalking through most of his responsibilities, he only knows what he is allowed to have. Not what he can give.</p><p>Giving is expected of him, though he doesn’t understand it. He gives anyway. He doesn’t know what it’s called, doesn’t know how to quantify it, but he doesn’t get in the way when it happens.</p><p>He can’t call it love, because to him, it’s simply giving. Yet more than giving. It’s taking something out of him that he doesn’t even know he has, so he can offer it up to others. It’s discovering his limits, discovering they don’t exist.</p><p>It’s learning that there is no end to what he can give. For the ones he can’t live without.</p></div></div>
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